A Store Asked Women to Walk Around Wearing Jeans and No Shirt for a Really Powerful Reason
A number of women paraded around in jeans and black bras in Toronto’s Union Station for a unique reason.
The group was participating in plus-size retailer Penningtons’ new #iwontcompromise campaign, which was designed to celebrate women embracing their bodies and not compromising who they are.
On Penningtons’ website, the brand detailed the message behind the campaign. “The #iwontcompromise movement is about raising our voice against body prejudices. It is about not compromising on what you love or who you are just because it makes someone else uncomfortable.”
The women gained attention from hundreds of spectators within the station, who stopped to take photographs and weigh in on the body-positive parade.
Penningtons live-streamed the demonstration on its Facebook page, encouraging passersby to post content from the event on social media with the tag #iwontcompromise.
Models from the campaign also posted images on their social media channels, describing in the captions what the event meant to them.
Pregnant plus-size model Courtney Mina took part to promote “strength, confidence and beauty at any size.”
A post shared by † Courtney Mina † (@khaleesidelrey) on Mar 19, 2017 at 7:18am PDT
“This was such an empowering campaign, and one I was blessed to be a part of (and 7 months pregnant, no less!),” she wrote on Instagram on March 19. “I can’t wait to teach my daughter the values promoted by this campaign, that no matter your size or what your body looks like, you deserve to feel proud, beautiful, and confident in yourself.”
Another plus-size model, Catherine Norman, who goes by the moniker Hourglass Cath on Instagram, participated in the campaign to silence the critics who have attacked her body shape and size throughout her life.
“I participated in @penningtons #iwontcompromise campaign because I wanted to show every man who ever told me that I was too fat to love, every girl who ever teased me in grade school because I had a fat ass, to the students in residence who called me a pig, and to every person who’s ever made me feel like I was less deserving of happiness or of love because of my size… that I am taking a stand against body prejudices and that I will never compromise myself ever again to meet someone’s perspective on how my body should look,” she detailed in the caption on March 18.
Meredith Shaw — another plus-size model who participated — felt that the women embracing the project were forever bonded because of it.
“Freedom! Fun! Fearless! Your body isn’t theirs to judge it’s yours to love,” she wrote alongside her image of March 19. “To the other women in this campaign, we are forever bonded through this powerful experience — much respect to @penningtons for putting this much-needed movement together.” Shaw also encouraged her followers to “Be brave, be bold & LOVE yourself.”
Today was a day to remember! So honoured to be part of the @penningtons #iwontcompromise campaign ❤️ Be brave, be bold & LOVE yourself xo pic.twitter.com/WXIA1MCmb1
— Meredith Shaw (@meredithshaw) February 9, 2017
The women definitely created quite a stir with the body-positive campaign.
Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.
